


True North

by naeildo



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Language, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25243531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeildo/pseuds/naeildo
Summary: Momo wants this: to dance, on stage if she can, and to hold the hand of the girl she loves behind drawn curtains, the crowd roaring their names. Sana has always wanted something infinitely larger.
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Minatozaki Sana, Hirai Momo/Myoui Mina, Minatozaki Sana/Yoo Jeongyeon
Comments: 9
Kudos: 124





	True North

**Author's Note:**

> [listen?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4u5RA5jue0)

**2012.**

Hirai Momo meets Minatozaki Sana on a Wednesday morning.

Kansai Airport is so big, and there’s rain gasping in torrents off the glass panels extending over their heads. Momo drags her suitcase through the glass doors to where the man holding a JYP placard is, and her parents pull the rest of her belongings behind her to huddle in close, Hana’s hand on her shoulder. Momo can’t really focus, now, at the prospect of going away without them.

“Hello,” a girl says from beside her, startling her out of her daze. She’s in a bright red beanie, and somehow infinitely more fashionable than Momo. The JYP representative is just checking their passports, and Momo has hers flipped out to the photo page, as does the girl. The girl’s photo is clean, her hair swept neatly to the side. She’s already pretty, and Momo knows she’ll be beautiful, eventually.

She has a wide smile cushioned in the middle of a bright, cherubic face, holding her parents’ hands like anchors. Momo is envious of how she already wants to like her. Momo is awkward and gangly and bad at smiling, with her crooked teeth and flat, unkempt bangs, and not so easy to love. Momo’s strength has never been charm. She knows that well enough.

Still, it’s impolite to just stare back, and Momo thinks she’ll be a good friend to make. “Hello,” Momo says, and the girl smiles even wider, which Momo didn’t think was possible.

“I’m Sana,” the girl says. And there’s something about Sana that Momo wishes she could figure out - about why Momo is smiling along, too, less out of politeness and more out of the fact that she… wants to.

“Momo,” Momo offers, softly, nodding, and feels Hana’s hand squeeze her shoulder, once. 

“Oh!” Sana says, smiling conspiratorially. “Like the peach, right?” Sana has such pretty eyes, Momo finds herself thinking absentmindedly. Such quiet, gentle hands for a loud, exuberant person.

  
  


Sana doesn’t leave her alone on the plane ride there, because, as fate would have it, they’ve ended up as seat partners. They can’t really sleep, Momo knows, for such a short ride, but she’d envisioned just dealing with her nerves on her own and politely ignoring her companion until they got to the other side, after which she would offer to help heft their carrier off the luggage belt. 

Instead, Sana has already tried to get her entire life history in a few hours and somehow has managed to not make her feel terribly uncomfortable in the process.

Sana is sixteen, like her. Has no siblings, unlike her, even though her best friends are basically her sisters. Sana likes cycling, and eating yoghurt.

At some point, Momo had long given up hope of watching any movies. Instead, she’d ripped open the snack packet they’d handed over to her and offered it to Sana. Sana took the orange crackers, her eyes flicking up to see if Momo minded. Then she put them back in, and fished out the dried peas instead.

“Favourite colour?” Sana asks, shoving all of them into her mouth at one time so that some of them rolled out and into her lap. Momo tried not to laugh, Sana’s knowing eyes narrowing as she stared her down teasingly.

“Umm..pink,” Momo says, pointing at her Barbie keychain. Hana had told her to tone her love for barbies down until she was sure she could trust other people, even if Momo has always been bad at estimating that.

But the way Sana’s eyes turn into crescents when she looks down at Momo’s keychain doesn’t feel like mockery.

“Cool,” Sana says, holding up the keychain tagged to her bag between her index and middle finger. Momo can make out a little white cat on it. 

“You like Sailor Moon?” Momo asks, and it’s the first time she’s fielded a question Sana’s way. Sana blinks, and there’s something warm that spreads in Momo’s chest when she smiles that makes Momo panic. 

“Because that’s very age appropriate,” she tacks on, stammering, and kicks herself mentally when she could have just said _I love it too._ The laugh that Sana lets out is a little high-pitched and giggly, and Momo doesn’t know why she doesn’t mind.

“Anything can be age appropriate as long as it makes you happy,” Sana answers, kind eyes careful to look a little longer at Momo’s keychain before glancing at her face. Sana is fond, Momo is sure. This is what fondness looks like. Then Sana cocks her head, suddenly caught by a stray thought. “With some obvious exceptions, of course. Like chainsaws for babies - ”

And the thought that’s been circling in Momo’s head - _when will she leave me alone? When will she find someone else to be interested in?_ turns from annoyance to something that feels remarkably like fear.

  
  
  


The answer may well be never, Momo figures, three months into training. 

Sana has been everywhere she has been - in the same classes, in the same room, their legs hanging off the edge of the mattress as they stare at the ceiling at nothing in particular. Sana bought a bunch of glow in the dark stars to decorate their ceiling but they started interfering with her sleep, so she pulled them back off. Now the patches of plaster stare back at them in star-shapes when Momo climbs up to Sana’s bunk.

Momo knows that Sana has been attracting everyone into her atmosphere, like the sun in the center of the agency. She can’t help it, Momo knows - and Sana learns so quickly, spouting words at Momo that she doesn’t understand and fluttering off with the best of them. 

And it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Not really, even if Sana is the only anchor she has here, adrift otherwise with trainees that she can only half carry out conversations with.

Because Sana always comes back. 

Because Momo is too quiet, because Momo knows how to dance a lot more than she knows how to speak, Sana starts to give Momo impromptu tuition. 

Today’s topic is likes and interests.

_My favourite food is Sushi._

_I am interested in dancing._

“You sound so formal,” Sana laughs, hurling a yellow travel pillow at Momo’s head from the other side of the bunk. They’re squirreled together on Sana’s top bunk, and the pillow nearly sails right over Momo’s head and into the vanity.

Momo throws it right back, and it hits Sana’s face with a loud smack, which Sana lunge for her, hands aiming for her sides.

“Show me how _you_ do it, then,” she challenges, swatting Sana’s wandering hands away, and immediately regrets it. This is all Sana has been doing, anyway, infiltrating conversations and talking, and talking, and talking. But Sana’s smiling a half-smile, pausing her attacks for now, and the smile is one that Momo doesn’t quite understand yet. 

“Okay,” Sana says, clearing her throat. Settling in against Momo, so her forehead presses against Momo’s shoulder, hands loose on Momo’s waist.

_My favourite food is Jjajangmyun._

Momo rolls her eyes. “Kiss-ass.”

_I am interested in Hirai Momo._

Momo’s head snaps up. It’s a weird feeling. She should lunge at Sana for being annoying, and they should laugh about it, but Sana’s tone is so hard to read. Like she’s - 

“Stop joking around,” Momo says, slapping at Sana’s shoulder, and suddenly the world bursts into technicolour motion again. Sana’s face settles back into a bright, smiling one.

“I’m showing you how to lie with a straight face!” Sana laughs, reaching for Momo’s cheeks, but it still sounds a little strange, to Momo’s ears. Makes something twinge deep inside her chest.

“You’re such an asshole,” Momo says, in perfect rhythm, smothering Sana with an arm lock around her neck.

“Please keep up with me, _Momorin,”_ Sana teases, kicking at her, and Momo feints a tackle before the bed creaks _loudly_ under them, and then she’s holding Sana close, laughing into her shoulder.

The next day, they bump Momo up to advanced dance class, and Sana to advanced Korean, and nothing changes.

Then everything does.

**2013.**

It’s Sana’s idea.

Or, well - it was Momo who saw Jiwon riding a bike at the Han river on one of their company-led excursions, and she’d mumbled something about wanting to give it a go, and Sana had latched onto that and refused to let go, wrangling them bikes from the bike shop with added discounts because of her blustering, wide-eyed smile.

So it was Sana’s idea, really.

Sana’s ideas are always the bad ones that get them in trouble, like that time they tried to fish jokbal through the windows with their shoe strings. But this one feels even worse - like Momo could fall and die and never dance again. But ever since the classes reshuffled they’ve barely had time together that isn’t collapsing onto their mattresses at night, and Sana wants - Sana wants to spend time, _fun time_ together _,_ she’d said, pulling Momo down the hallway after they’d brushed their teeth, with Momo, and Momo was helpless to resist.

Momo mounts her own bike, taking three tries before her feet find the pedals.

“Momorin, you have _training wheels,”_ Sana is laughing, screaming, hands firm on the back of Momo’s bike. 

Momo starts moving at a glacial pace, at first, the little boys and girls in the park running circles around her. Then Sana pushes her once, and again, and then Momo is pedaling forward, sweat gathering on her back.

When they’re out playing Sana doesn’t bother with enforcing the rule about Korean, but Momo has caught her dropping _heols_ and _daebaks_ out of nowhere, and Momo can’t help the laugh that she lets out when she finally gathers enough strength to push on the pedals, leaving Sana behind as she surges forward before the speed starts to get too scary. 

Sana is running after her, shoes hitting the pavement over and over, and Momo turns back to look at her.

The sun is setting in a golden brown curve, and Sana is squinting at her, arm across her forehead, eyes bright, arm flailing by her side, and Momo has always known all of this: the radiance of Sana’s smile, the curve of her lips when she’s shouting at Momo to cut it out and stop fooling around. The scrunch of her nose when she’s laughing - really laughing, hand over her stomach guffawing. But it’s at this moment that she feels something change, so quickly and so suddenly that she can’t put a finger on the part of the map where things have started veering so terribly off course.

It’s this that makes Momo cycle even faster. Sana’s running after her, and Momo pulls her hands off the handlebar, and Momo feels like she’s flying. Momo feels like she’s falling.

“This is how I’m repaid for trying to teach my friend!” Sana is yelling, in her too-loud, brash dialect that the other trainees have to struggle to understand, and Momo’s eyes start to sting with tears. 

Sana’s ideas always end in disaster.

&

Harbouring feelings for someone who lives with you is a little complicated, but also simple if she just ignores it. 

Momo tries not to think too much about it, because she’s sure it’ll fade away eventually. She’s mostly straight, and it’s probably because she’s a teenager and still a little lonely, and Sana is very, very pretty, even with her hair pulled back by a headband and her pores showing. Even more so now that her baby fat has started to sallow away.

At the very least, there are always lessons to distract her - the only class the two of them still share is dance, which is both a good and bad thing. Good, because Momo wants to be near Sana. Bad, because Momo wants to be near Sana, but Sana is always making friends with other people. And Momo should be used to it, really, but she’d just had a fight with Hana last night while Sana was in the shower, and it’s starting to seem like their debut will be further and further away, and Sana will slip away from her, one day. She must, with the light she has. Momo doesn’t have anything to make her stay.

Momo doesn’t garner any praise from Teacher Jung this lesson.

Momo doesn’t speak to Sana when they get back to their room, and Sana notices immediately, because she always does, that Momo’s mono-syllabaic responses have turned into a sort of silence. Momo feels stupid, for expecting Sana to see past that and doing nothing to help her. Immature and irrational, all the things she doesn’t want to be. She settles onto the bottom bunk, letting her back hit the wall. 

Still, most people would ask Momo what’s wrong, but Sana always seems one step ahead of her, almost. Like she’s learned Momo before she’s even fully understood herself. So Sana never asks. Only answers Momo’s unasked questions.

“Do you want to watch Doraemon with me?” Sana asks, finally, and Momo looks up at her, confusion washing over the ball in her stomach.

“What?”

“You told me you liked it,” Sana says, combing out the parting in her hair. She’s looking carefully at Momo’s reflection in the mirror.

“You’re tired,” Momo says, instinctively, and Sana’s face unravels into a soft smile. “And the wi-fi here sucks.”

“Never too tired for you,” Sana says, finally. Momo has always wanted certainty, even if she’s never asked for it. And Sana has always been so quick to promise it, even if Momo is still learning how to believe it. Sana fishes a floppy looking DVD box from the vanity drawer, and it’s recognizable instantly. Momo owned one, back in Kyoto, but it was a silly thing to pack for comfort.

“I found it in a shop round the corner,” Sana explains, smiling brighter at something Momo is doing with her face. She’s smiling, she realizes, when Sana breaks out into an even bigger grin. “I knew you’d like it.”

“That’s a bold assumption,” Momo counters, and doesn’t know what to do with herself with the way Sana is looking at her. What to do with her face. With her hands. With her heart.

“Not if I’m always right,” Sana says brightly, crossing the distance between them and reaching for Momo’s hand. Momo can only see half of her face from where she is, Sana’s eyes obscured by the grills of the top bunk. Then Sana bends down so her face is in full view.

Sana is apologizing, even if she may not know for what. Sana will always apologize, even if Momo doesn’t really deserve it. 

  
  


**2014.**

When Momo turns eighteen, Sana gathers a small group of them to scare her half to death on the rooftop. 

The celebrations Momo had back home were always a little quieter - the one time she got to spend her birthday back in Kyoto was just fake alcohol over hotpot and quiet conversations, but Sana has only ever known how to bring a sort of loud, roaring brightness into her presence, sweeping Momo up in all of it.

It’s cold out, and the wind is whipping at all of their ears, and Momo is in a t-shirt and loose windbreaker because Sana told her that she just needed her to grab something she left behind in the key cabinet. Then Sana covers her in a hug, puffy jacket scraping against Momo’s shoulders. Her laugh like fireworks in Momo’s ears.

In the after-afterparty, Momo watches Sana clean up the last of the streamers from the corners of the rooftop, head nestled against the crook of her elbow. The others have left, whether on Sana’s instructions or to sleep for the night. Sana stows two bottles of peach beer she’d hidden in the ice bucket and passes one to Momo.

“I feel like I was put here to be with you,” Sana says, to the air in front of her. This is the one thing they’ve always found hard, where everything else was as easy as breathing. At some point, Sana had stopped being able to say these things to Momo’s face, and neither can Momo to her, so they just sit like this, side by side, talking into the air in front of them.

Momo shrugs. Watches the moon flicker in the sky above them.

“How did you know I liked this brand of lemon cake?”

Sana frowns, turning to look at her, and Momo has memorized everything there is to know about Sana’s face by now. This frown is playful but a little hurt, still. “Don’t speak as if we don’t know each other.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” Sana says. The pads of her fingers trace careful lines down Momo’s knuckles. “Don’t do that.”

“You know, sometimes I forget my own favourite colour,” Momo offers, and Sana laughs. It’s a fond one, and Momo wonders when Sana’s affection for her will eventually expire.

“I’ll remember for you,” Sana says. The pressure on Momo’s knuckles building, like Sana’s trying to tether Momo to her.

“We aren’t guaranteed to make it together, you know,” Momo switches to Korean, and the effect it has on Sana is instantaneous. Sana tenses a lot, even if most people don’t notice. But Momo notices.

“Pink,” Sana breathes. Her breath makes clouds in the air. “I’ve remembered it for you.”

“Sana -”

“Let’s not talk about this on your birthday, okay?”

Momo snorts. “Isn’t that my request to make?”

“Yours is mine,” Sana says, in a way that’s a little too quick to be anything but instinctive, and Momo stops breathing for a moment.

And then, because Momo is frightened, she says - _Yah. Not at all._ Watches Sana’s face unfurl into something broken.

Not everything. Not yet.

**2015.**

The funny thing is, Momo only kind of knows Junsu, and she’s maybe had lunch with him at the cafeteria sometimes just because they have the same free period and Sana didn’t, and what Momo remembers most are his complaints about how there’s a senior with his name already, so they’re definitely going to give him a weird stage name, and Momo had just smiled and nodded. 

So it’s even stranger when Junsu comes up to her on Valentine’s day with a box of chocolates and a note that Momo can only half-understand tacked onto the back of it. She guesses she’s gotten a little prettier recently, and started wearing nice clothes, or something. Momo wonders how many boxes of chocolates Sana’s received today.

Even so, Sana is in Korean class, and Momo is alone, staring back at Junsu. From up close, he has a little acne, but an otherwise handsome face that he’s already started to grow into, along with his frame. Momo doesn’t remember him being this tall.

Junsu scratches at the back of his head. “Um,” he says, and Momo stands there, clutching awkwardly at the box of chocolates. “Do you want to go out for ice cream or something?”

Junsu is nice, and to Momo’s knowledge doesn’t say disgusting things about girls. 

“Okay,” Momo says, smiling. It feels nice to be liked by someone like Junsu. Uncomplicated. “I’m free after 4.”

  
  


When Momo gets back to their room, Sana is reading another one of their Korean textbooks, and she doesn’t look up when Momo closes the door behind her.

“Cramming?” Momo ventures, even though Momo can’t remember when the last time Sana needed to study for a Korean test was. Maybe they’re really amping up the difficulty this time.

Sana doesn’t respond, but Momo just chalks it up to focus. Hangs her coat on the hook behind the door and starts rummaging in their drawer for fresh clothes.

“I kinda thought you’d be on a date today,” Momo says, bending down to grab some underwear, “but I guess they schedule tests at the most inconvenient times?” 

When she turns back, Sana is staring at her.

“Why would you think I would be on a date?” Sana asks, in Korean. “Just because you were?”

Momo cocks her head. Lets her arms fall loose in front of her, because Sana sounds defensive and Momo really doesn’t want to fight right now.

“No,” Momo answers in Korean, remembering their rule. It makes her feel like Sana has an unfair advantage. “Because you have guys coming up to you all the time.”

“I don’t just agree to go out with any guy that asks me,” Sana says, and there’s something so angry in her tone that Momo can’t pinpoint the reason for.

“Okay,” Momo says, because she’s tired and there’s a little fluttery feeling in her chest that she doesn’t want to kill by arguing with Sana. Junsu would be so much easier. It’s a thought she allows herself to have, and she should allow it to grow, too, until it swallows whatever monster in her chest.

“What?” Sana says sharply. Momo doesn’t like this.

“Yeah, okay,” Momo says, trying to keep casual. “It’s good that you’re,” switches to Japanese, “being discerning.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Sana asks, still in Korean, and Momo looks up to see that Sana has stalked closer, arms drawn across her chest.

“What are you even angry about, Sana?” Momo asks, a little exasperated, towel in hand, back to Japanese. “You’re popular, and I thought maybe you’d go out with that guy you keep saying is really cute, because he _clearly asked you_ after class last week. If you didn’t like him, then fine. I’m sorry that I have low standards, but I had a nice time, and I would go out with him again if I -”

“I’m not angry because of that,” Sana snaps, and there’s something strange in her voice that gives Momo pause. Like Sana’s about to cry. And it’s so silly, Momo thinks, how quickly her indignance slides away, replaced only by the concern that’s starting to stretch her chest open. And there’s something else, something insidious at the back of her mind that’s telling her to entertain an idea she’d gotten rid of years ago. Why else would Sana turn Mark down? Selfish, Momo thinks. Selfish, stupid - 

“Sana?” Momo asks, reaching for her hand. Sana always calms down when Momo runs her hands up and down her arms, so she does that, but the other girl just seems to get more tense. “What’s wrong?”

Sana is about to lie. Momo can see it in the way that her shoulders go up even higher, from the twist of her mouth.

“Junsu could be a bad person,” Sana says, finally. Momo can’t help the laugh that she lets out. This is what Sana comes up with? Momo would rather she admit Korean is defeating her for once.

“Wouldn’t you know already, if he were?” Sana need only wave her hand for everything Junsu has ever done to be laid out at her feet.

“I don’t know everything.”

“You know all there is to know,” Momo tells her. 

Sana’s eyes are searching, and Momo feels suddenly like she asked the wrong question. Sana’s eyes are very, very dark. Momo wonders if she always knew and then forgot. 

“Not everything,” Sana says, softly, and Momo doesn’t know what to make of that, so she just laughs. Any other childish delusions would be dangerous.

“Okay,” Momo humours her, brushing a thumb against the inside of Sana’s wrist. “You’re right. You don’t know so many things… like heel turns. And being quiet,” Momo offers, smiling.

“Hey!” Sana protests, but her eyes are clearer now, the ones that Momo loves. And there should be something terrifying about it, Momo realizes, that the tight feeling in her chest now is so strong that it feels like it might just burst with the weight of the way Sana is looking at her. 

Junsu held her hand on the way home. It was sticky, and a little awkward, but Momo still felt that thrumming, and thought to try and recognize it. And she can give it a name now, even if it was only an echo of what it feels like right now, her forehead pressed to Sana’s, the other girl breaking into a smile again.

And then, an ugly, unwelcome thought - _If you loved me too,_ Momo thinks, _if you loved me too, I’ll never ask for anything else._

&

Here is a secret: Momo hasn’t always been the best at dancing. She was never _bad,_ but there was a lack of focus, of intensity, until Hana pulled her small, struggling frame in front of a mirror, told her sternly, kindly, so unlike herself that Momo had to pay attention:

Count. Number your steps. Left foot, left knee. Elbow up.

Left foot, left knee, elbow up.

Sana is in her room.

Everything has been strange, since Sana’s outburst, and Momo doesn’t really know what to make of it.

They’re not really doing much, which is normal, but tonight seems a little off-kilter, somehow, something buzzing in Momo’s head at the way Sana is looking at her and not saying a word. Sana is always talking, but this silence isn’t because she’s exhausted. Sana talks more when she’s exhausted, if Momo really thinks about it, knows subconsciously. All the things about Sana that sit somewhere in the back of her mind - less like knowledge and more like instinct. It’s the same sense that makes every alarm bell go off in her head when Sana moves in to sit beside her on the bottom of her bunk bed, abandoning the lyrics sheet she was staring at on the vanity. They both have a test tomorrow, and Sana is already leagues ahead of her. Memorizing things Momo wouldn’t dream of.

“Scoot over,” Sana orders. Her arms are already splayed out in front of her, and Momo is helpless in the face of the demand even if she rolls her eyes.

It’s weird, all of this. Sometimes Momo wonders if it’s normal, letting Sana lull her to sleep. But they allow themselves a lot of things under the name of comfort in a foreign country. Sana and Momo can’t _help_ being close because they remind each other of home, Momo likes to think. Even if they’re never like this with the other Japanese trainees. Or even the trainees from their region. Momo doesn’t know what to think, so she doesn’t.

Sana buries her face in Momo’s shoulder, pushing her into the wall, arms snug around Momo’s waist.

“Sleep in your own bed,” Momo tells her, voice muffled against the pillow. “There’s no space.”

 _“There’s no space,”_ Sana mimics. “Don’t act like you don’t like it!” 

Sana’s voice is so loud. Momo should hate it, but she likes it. Likes Sana’s laugh, and the way she squeezes Momo even tighter.

“I hate it,” Momo complains, a smile in her voice, and she hears Sana take in a breath of faux offense.

“Oh yeah?” Sana challenges, freeing her hands to tickle at Momo’s waist, and Momo shouts, turning around to push at Sana, but that just puts them face to face, Momo’s hands losing strength as they push against Sana’s chest, Sana’s wide eyes darkening into something that Momo can’t recognize, her hands wrapped around Momo’s wrist.

Momo knows it’s going to happen before it does. Sana is the language she learned first, after she came here, and this is the face Sana makes when she’s about to do something impulsive.

Momo’s head empties out. Sana is still holding her wrists gently, their hands trapped between their bodies, and it feels like her entire body is on fire. Like she’s in advanced dance class and Ms Choi is clapping her hands in front of her, and Momo can barely feel her legs or arms or anything besides the weight of Sana’s gaze on her back from across the room, heavy with pride. It feels like that. It feels like that, Momo thinks, until she’s holding Sana with shaking hands, until Sana climbs atop her and Momo thinks she could black out with the force of it. Her hands are fanning across Momo’s stomach, across the space her shirt has left now that it’s ridden up in the midst of their fumbling. Sana’s tilting her head, and Momo is keening up to meet her, and she’s out of breath, and Sana closes her eyes and opens them and jerks back, hard, when Momo reaches up to cup her cheek.

Left foot, left knee, elbow up. 

Sana’s red lips, hair falling in front of her face. Sana, her beautiful Sana. Hers. And then Sana’s kiss-swollen lips part.

Momo thinks Sana is going to say one of three things:

  1. I love you. 
  2. Your hair is a mess.
  3. I love you.



But when she looks - when she really looks, Momo knows with a clarity that it’s none of those. 

Instead, Sana says: “Fuck.”

Momo stares at her. Starts to smile, because Sana isn’t. 

“We were just fooling around,” Momo tries, instinctively, hand still on Sana’s face, and that’s what makes it feel like a lie. Momo draws her hand back.

“Sana…” Momo tries, again, and Sana is climbing off her, and Momo starts to panic. Losing Sana doesn’t make sense, and it won’t make sense, and nothing will make it make sense -

“We can forget about it,” Momo says again, voice light even as it trembles, and Sana turns back to face her, propped up on her palms, body caught between the metal grids above her and Momo’s body. Momo’s hands, drawn close to her chest. And it’s regret that’s in Sana’s eyes. Momo knows it, can see it. “We were just lonely,” Momo says, and knows she doesn’t mean it, and knows that Sana knows that she doesn’t mean it, and knows that they would both rather pretend than fall apart, if they had to choose. 

“We can’t,” Sana says. Momo feels like the world has shifted. But she can shift it back. Tectonic plates are bi-directional. She learned that from her father, the two of them on the shoreline. Staring out at the sea. Her small hands, and small feet, and the world, endless before them. Momo didn’t know, back then, that she was going to meet Sana. Feel the plates shift beneath her feet.

“I’m forgetful,” Momo says, easing Sana down onto her back next to her. Watching the rise and fall of her chest. Sana is wearing one of Momo’s tattered shirts. Momo can put a finger through a hole in the sleeve, if she felt like fooling around. But she doesn’t.

Left foot, left knee, elbow up.

“You are,” Sana says, and Momo knows she’s crying. 

“You remember everything,” Momo tells her. She shouldn’t, but they must have this, if nothing else. Sana must remember this.

Sana twines their fingers together. Sana doesn’t kiss her again. 

“I love you,” Sana says, staring up at the dusty mattress above their heads. Momo’s heartbeat fucks up in her chest.

“Okay,” Momo tells her. She doesn’t have to tell her. Sana knows. Sana has always known.

But it isn’t enough to fit all the dreams Sana has.

Momo wants this: to dance, on stage if she can, and to hold the hand of the girl she loves behind drawn curtains, the crowd roaring their names. Sana has always wanted something infinitely larger.

&

"Be honest," Momo tells her. And it's strange, because Sana rarely keeps anything from Momo, narrates her life in such detail that Momo starts to zone in and out, snapping back to the present only with effort. 

But Momo has come to learn that Sana is always dishonest about two things.

"I _am_ being honest," Sana says, tapping her shoe against the fake oak floor. The heater is running haphazardly through it, some parts of the floor hot and others ice cold.

The practice room has become their home recently. Momo practices best at dawn, and Sana slumbers, most of the time, head propped against the mirror, drifting in and out to burst into applause even when she’d been sleeping through most of Momo's routine. 

Momo sits down next to her. The floor is cold.

"So what did Ms Choi say to you that I couldn’t hear myself?" Momo’s looking ahead at the clock on the wall.

Sana cocks her head. Their reflection in the studio mirror in front of them goes on forever, Sana a shoulder's breadth away from Momo. A thousand shoulder's breadths away.

"Nothing," Sana says, idly, in Korean now, but Momo knows what the rest of her body says. She’s gratified that Sana isn’t bothering to smile, at the very least.

Momo shrugs.

"I thought we were past the stage of lying to each other." 

Sana’s face sours into something that Momo rarely sees. Anger - real and sudden, at her, at something, before it sluices away, leaving something quiet in its wake.

“Sa-tan,” Momo tries, all pretense of learning and mastery of this alien language forgotten, Kansai-ben slipping back in between them. Feeling, for the first time, like she's wielding a sword against Sana’s armour. “What is it?”

“I’m just - “ Sana says, bites her bottom lip,nearly hard enough to draw blood. Only hard enough to bruise. Momo reaches forward anyway, her hand quiet above Sana’s knee. Sana blinks at their reflection in the mirror. Slides her hand over Momo’s. “I’m trying to decide if there’s something I could live without.”

“You could live without nearly anything,” Momo says. Watches Sana’s eyes flutter closed in the reflection. 

&

Momo’s world ends for the first time in a quiet office, fist curled into the front of her t-shirt, wet from the sweat from the class she was pulled unceremoniously out from.

A survival show. Too many Japanese girls. In a way, she likes that explanation. It wasn't that she wasn't good enough. She's just collateral damage. 

When she stumbles out the door, the world turns for a brief, terrifying moment, too bright. And then Sana’s hands, strong as anchors, are warm upon her face. It's a dingy place, where her world ends, her shirt damp and twisted up into a ball around Sana's fingers. The corridor walls a bright blue. Sana's mouth, pressed to the apple of her cheek. 

_You’re here,_ Momo thinks. Feels something splinter, bright and terrible, inside her chest. _You’re always here._

“You look like a pufferfish,” she hears herself say instead, when Sana pulls back,and watches the way Sana fights a sob. Tries to laugh, for them. Her face is red, eyes swollen and puffy. “And you should be in class.”

Sana’s hair is falling all over her face. “Fuck class,” Sana says, looking up at Momo. Sana’s bright, brilliant eyes. Her twisted, trembling mouth. Sana knows. Sana has always known.

Momo shakes her head. It feels light, her vision blurring at the edges. "You should go back."

"Ask me to stay with you," Sana tells her, and there is something larger in her words. Impulsive. Untrue. Because she's being silly. Because the moment is making her say things she doesn't mean. Momo knows it, and knows it, and knows it. "Please ask me."

On the wall there is a camera that swings slowly back and forth across the hour. In a dream, Momo will see Sana's small, trembling back out of its eye. Understand that it was only a moment, swept away in whatever Sana is about to become. The brightest, most impossible star. 

"You'll live," Momo says, quietly, hands brushing against Sana's. Even as Sana starts to shake her head. Momo's cheek pressed to hers as a refusal.

She nods, just once. To be rebellious. To feel the flutter of Sana's eyelashes, damp against her cheek. "You will."

&

Tomorrow she is going home. 

So it is only adrenaline. Only Sana, crawling into her bed in the middle of the night. Only Sana’s soft hands and gentle arms and Momo’s hands working carefully at Sana’s sleep shorts. 

They’ll deal with the consequences in the morning, Momo keeps thinking, and Sana mustn’t be thinking at all, because she still has a showcase in a few days and no one in her team is going to step up unless she does, but Sana is tugging Momo’s hand down, down, down, and - 

“Sana,” Momo says, against her mouth, fingers fumbling in the dark. “Is this okay?” Momo asks, in Korean, and there’s a fire red flush that shoots down her spine when her fingers disappear under Sana’s waistband and Sana gasps, hitching her calf over the dip of Momo’s spine.

Sana has done this before, Momo knows, even if she never told her much about it. But not with a girl.

 _Is this okay?_ Momo asks, again and again, adjusting her hand. The elastic makes it difficult. It’s clumsy and awkward and made better only by the desperation in it, and Momo fumbles until Sana lets out a sound that she’s never, ever heard before when she slides in.

Sana’s tearing up - or - maybe crying, and Momo -

“Did I hurt you?”

“Momorin,” Sana says, writhing under her, and it sounds a little filthy this time, when she’s pressing open-mouthed kisses to Momo’s neck, the bare skin under her collar, hand coming down to pivot against Momo’s wrist. “Please stop talking.”

And Momo laughs, then, and only Sana could make her laugh, here, now, despite everything, so Momo dips down to kiss her again. It feels like flying, and it feels like falling, and it burns its way through Momo’s chest, leaving a wasteland in its wake.

Nothing will ever be the same, Momo thinks vaguely, when Sana buries her face in Momo’s neck, muttering _Momo, Momo, Momo._ No one else. When Sana collapses, boneless, under her, and looks at Momo with so much - with so little, Momo thinks, more accurately. With so little caution. Sana has always trusted her with so much, and now Momo has taken the very last thing she could because Sana has given it to her.

Later, Sana traces imaginary lines down the plane of Momo’s face with careful fingers. They won’t fix her crooked nose now, or her small eyes. Momo imagines Sana two years down the road, imagines her face that’ll be just a little different. But Momo will recognize her, no matter what.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Sana tells her. They've been lying here for what feels like hours. What feels like minutes. Momo doesn't want to check.

And Momo should really protest, because Sana’s wellbeing is so important, right now. For the dreams that she’ll chase alone now.

Instead, she nods. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Sana parrots, laughing. Sana has done enough crying. 

“Okay,” Momo says, and rolls over so she can kiss Sana again.

Tomorrow she is leaving home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [♦](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4u5RA5jue0)


End file.
